Learning Classics is a bit like putting on a magic pair of 3-D glasses. Once you start delving into the language and the culture, you'll start to see it all around you. This blog is a record of the club's journey through the worlds and language of ancient Rome and Greece... and through modern times, too, searching for the influence of classics all around us. You'll also be able to find vocab, home tasks, links and generally enlightening info here, too.

24 April 2017

Lesson 12: How to rule

We warmed up this week by looking at some words and ideas important to Aristotle, and by thinking of English words that come from those words.

Next, we moved on (or perhaps backwards!) from Aristotle to his teacher Plato, who had some very interesting thoughts about the best ways for society to organise itself. First of all, we matched up various ‘-archy’ (‘rule’) and ‘-cracy’ (‘power’) words to their definitions.

Timocracy - rule by people called Tim?

Democrat? Plutocrat? Oligarch?

Plato had some very clear thoughts on which systems of rule were better than others, but pretty low down on his list was democracy (behind aristocracy, timocracy and plutocracy).

Say what?!! Isn’t democracy what we all aspire to?!!

But, perhaps with recent elections and referenda in their minds, several of the class came up with exactly the argument that the great Plato makes: “Some people don’t know what they’re on about and make the wrong decisions.” (Talk about great minds thinking alike!)

Next week, we’ll explore some of the ways in which voters can be biased, and work out whether modern society has the answers.